The present invention is directed to an open ended cap for industrial pipes, and primarily for oil country tubular goods (OCTG) such as threaded tubing and casing.
Open ended pipe caps have been used for many years to protect the threaded ends of tubing and casing goods. The caps typically have a uniform wall thickness and are difficult to install, frequently fall off during transportation and handling, and are difficult to remove. To prevent the caps from prematurely falling off, the caps are frequently intentionally undersized in relation to the pipe to be protected to provide a higher degree of interference between the pipe and the cap. However, this solution has not always been successful, as the caps at times still fall off or have so much interference that they become very difficult to remove, and the end user often is forced to use a knife or tool to aid in the removal of the end cap from the pipe. This often damages the threads that the end cap was originally put on the pipe to protect.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide an end cap for use with threaded tubing and casing that is easy to install with a single motion, as well as easy for the end user to remove.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide an end cap which provides some impact resistance when installed over the end of the pipe.